Why is promoting the SAHM choice a feminist issue?

[HelenBaaBaaBlackSheep]

This kept coming up in the other thread and I didn't want to drag it off topic so thought I could start it here. I'm genuinely interested as I don't see any connection.

To explain, feminism to me is about equality of treatment (e.g. same wage for same job), equality of opportunities, the rejection of a system in which women are property to be exchanged, shared or abused. But I don't get what it has to do with lifestyle choices like being a SAHM.

FFS I am even more ignorant about geography/timezones than I thought I was. (Your hometown is faaaaaar away, for some reason I thought it was nearer.) My excuse is that I am a bit of a night budgie and always have been (even more so after my years of shift work). But am going to bed shortly.

I watched an interesting programme about the building of the Titanic and how many smaller industries across the country made items for it. The anchor was made in the Midlands and they showed how chain links used to be made in small smithies. Women had the babies in a sling whilst they were working with the furnace and bashing the metal. Not something I'd like to go back to, particularly, but I do have a wry smile when I see babies in slings around town. Anyway...

That is interesting AyeRobot. I've got a massive bee in my bonnet ATM about the erasure of women from history

Quick google found this link mentioning women chainmakers Looks interesting

Must sleep now so will read in the morning.

Night all.

THanks, I think I'm going to make a scrap-book for DD

What's this about? Is it the pension thing where we don't lose our pensions?

If it is, I think that's jolly good and I assume it applies both ways?

Making iron chain seems to have been work that women had a large share in. There was a big strike in 1910 that ended in victory for the women workers:

chainmakersstrike.co.uk/

The centenary was celebrated, so those women weren't forgotten!

We've just been erased from history in popular consciousness.
I read an article in Time a few months ago that brazenly stated, in a Men's Liberation five page spread, that "since the workplace changed from brawn to brain in the last 30 years, women have been going to work outside the home"

This was me [sick]

I started a thread about that article here. We're just erased.

Can I take slight issue with your comparison of doctors and healthcare workers, flamingo?

I agree both jobs are essential.

But I think the reason they are paid differently has as much to do with supply and demand as one being traditionally male work and the other female work.

For example, doctors (male and female) require a minimum of 5 years training before they qualify and after that they have to do their junior/senior years in hospital etc. before they specialise.

Healthcare workers don't need to be nearly as highly qualified, if at all.

So the former is in relatively short supply, whereas the latter is abundantly available. In economic terms, that is why one attracts the substantially higher salary than the other.

Of course, if you go far enough back, women were often the community healers anyway.

Incidentally, as a former career person and now full-time mother, I would like to see the job I do - raising the next generation - regarded as the essential work it is.

What could be more important than ensuring the continuation of the species and bringing up children to be valuable members of our society and guardians of our future?? And yes, my family is going to have to tighten our collective belt, but it was something I wanted to do. DH offered to be SAHD, but I wanted to spend these early years with my child/ren.

Sakura

'stolen our skills and sold them back to us'....? Like knitting your own Internet?

Sorry to be snippy, but alwasys makes me when I read people romantising the pre-industrial past/ the ideal of self sufficiency on an Internet forum.

Is it me who's fascinated and slightly apprehensively wondering what SGB sold in her little shop?

I have images of a window frontage on a little fancy high street somewhere, festooned with chains and dildos

I will be disappointed if it turns out to be something ordinary

As ever I am enjoying Sakura's posts on this topic.

Himalaya I don't get your point, could you explain it a bit more? I do think that a lot of things that women used to know have been lost in our society, and they are now sold to us as terribly specialised things for which we need to pay for advice and equipment. BF springs to mind on that.

InmaculadaConcepcion

If your husband wanted to be a SAHD and you wanted to be a SAHM couldn't you have both gone part-time therefore both getting the enjoyment of being with the children and not sacrificing your career?

Many jobs won't allow people to go part-time, we thought about it (I was earning more than DH). In the end my work wouldn't allow me to go part-time and DHs wouldn't either. So we fell into the "usual" way of doing it ie I got a part-time job close to home and that was the end of that career.

I also think that it has been shown that people who work part-time do not progress in their careers like those working full-time, so a part-time move is often a career scupperer even if it's in the same job the person was climbing the ladder very nicely in before they went part-time IYSWIM.

The default in many industries is that full-time and possible long hours / flexibility are the keys to getting ahead, and people who cannot give that level of dedication are left to stagnate. Of course some industries are better than others in that regard, but certainly large sections are still like that IMO and IME.

Sardinequeen - Sakura talked about Food, clothes, medicine, birth, pottery- stolen from women and now the only way we can get them back is by working for The Man.

A subsistence life of growing all your own food,making your clothes, being without modern medicine = abject poverty. It ain't nice!

I think at the moment there are choices in theory, but in practice the choices available are very constrained by a range of factors that differ for people in different situations.

I thought Sakura's point about "lifestyle choices" was excellent TBH.

That wasn't how I took it Himalaya... I expect she will be back later to clarify!

My shop sold clothes, t shirts, books, condoms. it was a right old mishmash of things TBH (the rude books and condoms etc were in a screened off section) - probably why it didn't work out.

SGB thank you for enlightening me!

How did people know that the rude section was there? Was there a sign?

It sounds great TBH shops have got too boring and samey around here. We could do with a clothes shop with a sideline in rude books

Good question, Youll

In fact, I didn't want to go back to work part/time. I guess I was depriving DH of the opportunity of being P/T SAHD, but that was the decision we came to. I suppose we could have asked our employer if we could do a job-share (we worked for the same company). But given the breastfeeding and badly broken nights (once BF was established, DD wouldn't take a bottle) I wasn't inclined to go out to work as well, if I could avoid it.

Mind you, I have done a little private tutoring from home while DH looked after DD, so I haven't been entirely idle on the wage-earning front

I am a sahd and I don't think I should praised for it. Afterall I am bringing up and looking after my own kids that I brought into the world and even 1 that I didn't bring into the world.(My step daughter) The way I see is I brought them into the world it is my responsibility to make sure they are looked after and provided for. If you don't want to care for them don't have them. Simple :)
I don't know why feminists want sahp to be praised for bringing their own kids up. I have also never been praised when I was working. It is part of life and why should you get praised for what everyone else has to do as well? Should you be praised for doing charity work? Answer yes. Should you be praised for providing or caring for your family? Absolutely not. The value you get out of caring for your family is one day you will grow old and your family will look after you.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that parenting should be praised, just that the role should be valued for the vitally important job it is, omg.

I don't think praise is what SAHPs are after, Omg... appreciation, maybe.

The trouble is, compared with the "world of work", caring for loved ones, be they children or elderly relatives/spouses etc. simply isn't valued by our society.

And a lot of SAHMs lose out on a good chunk of pension and financial independence by choosing to stay home and look after their children, so it comes at an economic cost, too.

Personally, I'm not looking for a pat on the back, but some recognition that what I'm doing has an importance beyond my own front door would be nice at times.

Sure, I/we chose to have our kids, but we're still creating the next generation and doing our best to make sure that generation will contribute positively to our society.

And yes, hopefully look after us in our dotage....

But why is it a 'lifestyle choice' to not want to hand your baby to someone else for most of the day? I tried it and hated it.

I know it is important but as I said the value you get out of it is that one day your kids will thank you for it and that is all that matters to me. I don't care if people don't value it as highly as working or not. Parents all ready get money from the state when they have kids I would say that gives it value and I have to say I have never seen anyone value work more than being a parent. When I go out on the street I normally don't get asked about work at all but I always get asked how the kids are doing. People actualy prefer it if you don't talk about work but if you talk about parenting that is a lot more acceptable. I seen someone today in the shop that I haven't seen in about 2 years and the first thing they asked me was how the kids were getting on etc.
I still support my mum even though I don't live with her and I respect that my mum chose to stay at home to raise me. I still thank her for it to this day.

"I have to say I have never seen anyone value work more than being a parent. When I go out on the street I normally don't get asked about work at all but I always get asked how the kids are doing. People actualy prefer it if you don't talk about work but if you talk about parenting that is a lot more acceptable. "

Of course people ask how kids are. Kids are people, it's polite to ask about them and people want to know. But, dare I say it, your experience of your work as a sahd being valued could be so because you are a man doing it. I certainly get turned away from if I talk about my life as a mum rather than my work, after politely feigned interest.

However you expeience it, omg, and I'm glad it's so positive for you, but I don't think many sahms at all would report similar feelings of being valued by society.